I agree that the Code Geass' ending was fitting, I just think it wasn't set up very well.

Spoiler

Lelouch wanted to set himself up as a symbol of oppression before his assassination, but very little focus is spent on his crimes.I also think the plan was really dumb. I don't think becoming history's all-time worst person so that people will rise up in the name of justice passes the sanity test. It was thematically appropriate, but a little hard to swallow.The climax of Lelouch's goal to avenge his mother really takes the idiot cake though. To create "a world without lies", the emperor builds the Sword of Akasha to slay the collective unconscious of humanity. I didn't really get the connection there. Apparently it has something to do with the fact that all of humanity is just one soul wearing different identities. But destroying humanity's physical forms and leaving on the collective unconscious be the way to "remove the masks"? Wouldn't using a vaguely defined weapon on "god" just kill everybody? And how and why on earth did god/collective humanity destroy the emperor and Marianne? And why particularly just then and not sooner?

*"To YMTC it up" means to design cards that have value mostly from a design perspective. i.e. you would put them in a case under glass in your living room and visitors could remark upon the wonderful design principles, with nobody ever worring if the cards are annoying/pointless/confusing in actual play

I agree that the Code Geass' ending was fitting, I just think it wasn't set up very well.

Spoiler

Lelouch wanted to set himself up as a symbol of oppression before his assassination, but very little focus is spent on his crimes.I also think the plan was really dumb. I don't think becoming history's all-time worst person so that people will rise up in the name of justice passes the sanity test. It was thematically appropriate, but a little hard to swallow.The climax of Lelouch's goal to avenge his mother really takes the idiot cake though. To create "a world without lies", the emperor builds the Sword of Akasha to slay the collective unconscious of humanity. I didn't really get the connection there. Apparently it has something to do with the fact that all of humanity is just one soul wearing different identities. But destroying humanity's physical forms and leaving on the collective unconscious be the way to "remove the masks"? Wouldn't using a vaguely defined weapon on "god" just kill everybody? And how and why on earth did god/collective humanity destroy the emperor and Marianne? And why particularly just then and not sooner?

To be honest I don't really remember any of that. The Pizza Hut episode(s) made more of an impact.

Just finished off Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash. Really liked it as a representative of the "random kids fall into a magical world that functions strangely like an RPG and have adventures where almost nothing about how they got there or why is ever explained" genre. Honestly, having so little about it explained really helped the narrative over all and there were a lot of side bits that I'm both happy and sad were never really explored.

I'm also about three episodes deep into The Ancient Magus Bride, which I hear people really liked. Also Food Wars is back in session with a new season and I'm really enjoying getting my favorite cooking anime back.

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magicpablo666 wrote:

You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - The most famous of which is "never get involved in an thread with GM_Champion" - but only slightly less well-known is this: "Never go in against AzureShade when card design is on the line!"

Lots of fantastic comedy sequels this season. Gintama is focusing on the funny little stories that are the backbone of it, Classicaloids is back with their wacky cast of composers, Osomatsu has lost none of its irreverence, and Hozuki is still an amusing peak at the afterlife.

The new stuff I'm still working into. AMB is visually impressive, but still waiting on the story to get some teeth. Still, it's weaving a world of magic which is thrilling to be a part of.

I tried to watch some anime, but was repulsed by Japanese voices (how high can you get ?), characters always overreacting to everything, and things that make no sense, in example common cliches or titles of those shows.Like, I'd really want to watch a show about the fate of the world being decided by a Mahjong game, or about an ingenious, aristocratic revolutionary with a power of hypnosis or a journey of a medieval merchant accompanied by a harvest spirit... Those are such a cool plot concepts, but uh, style...

I finally, for the first time in my life, watched an anime series.It's The CholerismCholericism Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumia.It's basically Homestuck: the Anime. The colorful, multi-layered, absurd yet logical world, populated by colorful, multi-layered, absurd yet logical charachters. Which I liked. And they all seemed like real people, even when they weren't, not overreactiong to everything or being slaves of their cliches. Global plot is amazing, and the irony... oh my... THE IRONY. The athmosphere creation was very, very good, with occasional bombs like Yuki's exposition sequence (big thanks to translators there), computer game episode, and huuuuuuuuge time loop that felt like bold, amazing experiments. I liked narrator's internal (and external) comments too. Speaking of this, voice acting was very good too, esp. at ditching original japanese speech.

Carp: the intro/outro (HOW ?! WHYYY ?!), local plots aren't that great, charachter style is a bit annoying sometimes, Status Quo is (demi)God: central conflicts are never resolved and central questions are never answered, not enough worldbuilding.

I's awesome and it's ironic and it's a good story. That's really all there is to say on the matter.

Spoiler

Haruhi: Muse of Light - with tendency to invert to Lord of Void.Yuki: Mage of LightItsuki: Seer of SpaceHaruhi: Heir of TimeKyon: Page of Blood

CLASSES:Muse: The most passive and creative class, one of the most powerful ones. Can just sit around and do nothing, while creating a ton of assaigned aspect and imbuing in onto others, and not even realizing it. Ideally, acts for others.Lord: The most active and destructive class, one of the most powerful ones. Can command/weaponize assaigned aspect on universal scale. Ideally, acts for itself.Mage: The active class that deeply analyzes it's aspect, manipulates it, and uses it, mostly for themselves.Seer: The passive class that deeply analyzes it's aspect, and clarifies it for others, and manupulates others for/with it.Heir: The class that "goes with the flow", protects itself with assaigned aspect, and eventually inherits amazing power of it. Eventually.Page: Underestimated, unrealized, hidden, untapped, MASSIVE potential for work with it's aspect.

I finally, for the first time in my life, watched an anime series.It's The CholerismCholericism Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumia.It's basically Homestuck: the Anime. The colorful, multi-layered, absurd yet logical world, populated by colorful, multi-layered, absurd yet logical charachters. Which I liked. And they all seemed like real people, even when they weren't, not overreactiong to everything or being slaves of their cliches. Global plot is amazing, and the irony... oh my... THE IRONY. The athmosphere creation was very, very good, with occasional bombs like Yuki's exposition sequence (big thanks to translators there), computer game episode, and huuuuuuuuge time loop that felt like bold, amazing experiments. I liked narrator's internal (and external) comments too. Speaking of this, voice acting was very good too, esp. at ditching original japanese speech.

Carp: the intro/outro (HOW ?! WHYYY ?!), local plots aren't that great, charachter style is a bit annoying sometimes, Status Quo is (demi)God: central conflicts are never resolved and central questions are never answered, not enough worldbuilding.

I's awesome and it's ironic and it's a good story. That's really all there is to say on the matter.

I'd like to say a few things in response to that. A disclaimer: I've only watched the first season, so any big changes to the characters or series as a whole I won't be aware of; I think my overall opinions will probably still hold through that second season if I ever get around to it, but know that my reasoning may be a little flawed here.

Firstly, I try not to make retroactive connections like that. Homestuck came years after Haruhi. I'm not going to "correct you" because that would be dumb on multiple levels, but know that I'm not going to be drawing any parallels here and mostly ignoring your more in-depth comparisons between the two IPs.

Secondly, I am going to heavily disagree with you that the characters felt "real" and not "slaves to their clichés" or "over-reacted to everything". I found each of the main characters to be cliché nearly to the point of being insufferable. Each of them, and all the situations they were put into, were played exactly as their character types would be to get the maximum amount of reaction from the young-ish audience they were going for. A friend of mine described it (without ever having watched it, I should note) as "quality waifu show", and, despite my disdain for the term "waifu", I'm inclined to use the same description. Every one of the main characters is designed and acts in such a way as to attract people to them, and I'm including both the boys and the girls in this because damn even I as a straight male can see how attractive the boys are. The thing is, I consider them all fairly one-dimensional, or at best two-dimensional; they never felt like "real people" to me.

Anime productions, WAY more often than western shows, tell a complete and contained story rather than remaining unfinished or a series of vignettes (the West is starting to cotton on to this).

Most Anime have half-hour episodes, which provides both a bite-sized consumption minimum, and a brisk internal pacing.

Being animated, creators have a lot of freedom to tell stories that require impressive visuals without needing a massive effects budget.

Some people like the art style(s) common to anime, over those common to western animation.

There is a LOT of it and a lot of it is genre fiction; which despite some notable successes has been largely derided and overlooked in the West, so fans of Genre and Speculative Fiction who are willing to look to Anime are likely to find many stories that fit their favored categories.

And now, a micro-essay on one source of appeal for Anime to Western Audiences.

In general, Media from one's own culture is both Familiar and Developed. For English language western media, we have tropes dating back to Shakespeare (at least) still dominating our writing and creations. And in some ways, the craft of storytelling is an iterative process. What's truly new is rough around the edges, but if we take up the storytelling tools we refine them use after use. Those who consumed crude versions of a story might fashion better versions, and those who know those better versions would output more nuanced versions. Waves of deconstruction and reconstruction come and go as the tools are challenged and then the challenges themselves challenged. The Lord of the Rings was not generated wholecloth without millennia of European culture and writing to draw on, and even now what Tolkien did is being redone by current authors, taking and refining what pleases them while setting other elements to the side. As such, we've had hundreds of years to refine our techniques of storytelling with the tools we've been working with. When something new -- truly new -- comes along it is unrefined, and we might appreciate it somewhat for its newness, but next to something that benefits from those ages of iteration, it doesn't have a lot of 'catch'. A genius sculptor working with stone-age tools will not produce art as pleasing to the senses as a sculptor of common skill working with the tools of the modern era.

Yet we still crave novelty, and in some ways the pursuit of Anime provides that to Western audiences. the culture of Japan is so distant from the West that their tools and methods of storytelling have diverged from ours. They've still been refining their own stories for eons, so Anime benefits from the iteration necessary to create something gripping, but those refined forms will look new to members of other cultures who are not familiar with its origins. And you can see that the reverse is also true: Japanese media seems to have a fascination with the trappings of Western Fantasy, and in many ways works more with them now than we do ourselves: because we have provided these refined yet novel images. And when a creation from a Japanese mind influenced by Western media is presented to Western audiences, we see not just the strange and novel (however refined) but also something of the comforting and the familiar, enough to ease the western audience in and let the new elements (such as unfamiliar character archetypes) shine through without being off-putting. Thus, even to many casual observers, it dodges the problem of the "truly novel" hits by lacking elements to which the consumer has grown accustomed.

And once a Western viewer has consumed enough Anime that its own eccentricities are no longer novel, they have likely formed their own opinions on the tools and tropes of Anime, and have probably enjoyed some enough to seek out more of the same.

moreso just wondering why its so widespread here. its one of the biggest threads here, many are rocking anime avatars. i dunno. it was never my thing, not knocking it but I was never big on the animation style, the excess of yelling and high pitched voices, the frenetic quality to a lot of it

i dug the first two seasons each of yugioh, pokemon, and some dbz (dbz moreso for nostalgia) but that was about it for me

was just looking for insight

this is coming from someone who praises star trek and trailer park boys as pinnacles of television so take it as you will

i dug the first two seasons each of yugioh, pokemon, and some dbz (dbz moreso for nostalgia) but that was about it for me

In addition to my prior post that likely passed yours in the night, I do note those are all "Shonen" anime of, more or less, the "Fighting" genre (Shonen is a demographic; essentially, it means "For teen boys" -- so the shows you've watched that share lots of yelling and high-pitched voices as well as some flashy fight scenes, are targeted primarily at males 13-17). If you would be amenable to looking to expand horizons, I might recommend a show like Haibane Renmei -- a contained, 12 episode story aimed at a very different demographic and thus (while some voices might still be high pitched) cut from a very different cloth when it comes to episode pacing and content.

The Japanese sure do love their high pitched voices. I know Japanese ladies try to speak in a higher pitch to sound more attractive, but do Japanese people in general speak in higher pitches? Or does a higher pitch just make any character more likable?

*"To YMTC it up" means to design cards that have value mostly from a design perspective. i.e. you would put them in a case under glass in your living room and visitors could remark upon the wonderful design principles, with nobody ever worring if the cards are annoying/pointless/confusing in actual play

Pretty much the only characters that will have high pitched voices are young children, most depictions of high school girls, and some older female characters. It's usually a way of indicating cuteness and/or being young, or innocence. Culturally, Japanese women put a lot of importance on being cute, so that's why they tend to cling to seeming younger than they are. Of course, they also tend to shame people who try to be cute even though they are obviously a mature adult.

If you were to hear actual highschool girls in Japan, they would not be as high pitched, on average, as their anime counterparts. For anime girls, the pitch of their voice is just as much part of their character design as having round or sharp cornered eyes. The girl that is more serious and scolds others for acting like fools will tend to have a lower voice, while the girl who is the fool will have a higher voice. Things like that.

For the former, I kind of flipped out at the end of the first episode because THE TITS WERE A PUN, but then got mood whiplash between crying, laughing, and admiration as the show went on. I think it's possible the mecha anime I watched as a kid were just crap, because I thought Diebuster was an amazing show. Either that, or I'm too emotional and should not be allowed to watch anime.

Golden boy was... interesting. The tits were not a pun in that one, and it got incredibly risqué at times. I'm not complaining, mind you, but occasionally it did get a little too obvious, and as a whole the show seemed to skirt the lines of a harem anime. I was quite surprised at how enjoyable it ended up being, since I nearly hated the protagonist for much of the first episode. It really pulled it all together in the final episode, and I was surprised at how uplifting it was. I had a lot of fun watching it, but it was kind of a goofy show.

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